Gold Member

It makes me reflect upon the hopelessness of our condition and its religious context suggests to me that we simply look for an omniscience to excuse the suffering. Theodicy, if you like, being necessary to make the unbearable bearable. The mysterious way being most definitely the fowl catalyst for the theist egg.

Anyway, I wondered what you might think about the question in the OP. I was watching something tonight and it crossed my mind if you could ever understand someone's art if you didn't know the questions they were asking themselves. :wink:

Gold Member

Not according to Swedenborg. (I am on a major Swedenborg expedition recently -- did you know he came to London to die?) He'd say if we have no hope, we will not be able to perceive hope, as ideas cannot be ingested by our understanding unless we are rendered susceptible to them by our virtues.

Art, being made of multifaceted symbols, perforce has multiple interpretations anyway. It means far more than I intend it to the minute I make an utterance or action into art.

Meaning and cognition especially of things we sense to partake of the Divine have to do with our attitude as much as what they are presenting. So if you focus on the hopelessness of the thing, that's what you will get. If you focus on the godhood of a thing, it will show how it relates to God.

Not according to Swedenborg. (I am on a major Swedenborg expedition recently -- did you know he came to London to die?) He'd say if we have no hope, we will not be able to perceive hope, as ideas cannot be ingested by our understanding unless we are rendered susceptible to them by our virtues.

Art, being made of multifaceted symbols, perforce has multiple interpretations anyway. It means far more than I intend it to the minute I make an utterance or action into art.

Meaning and cognition especially of things we sense to partake of the Divine have to do with our attitude as much as what they are presenting. So if you focus on the hopelessness of the thing, that's what you will get. If you focus on the godhood of a thing, it will show how it relates to God.

Gold Member

I agree. Love the musac btw, inspires all kinds of things. Not to sound cryptic but sometimes rock bottom can become a strange kind of hope.

Click to expand...

I was reading this book about the history of sex and it was discussing the origins of christian attitudes to sex which frankly aren't very tempting. But anyway, the line was that because we are fallen, and don't think we will forget thank you Eve, there is no hope for this world, no purpose other than to await judgment and redemption in the next. Hence the strange notion of no real hope here. God condemned us, live with it.

I was reading this book about the history of sex and it was discussing the origins of christian attitudes to sex which frankly aren't very tempting. But anyway, the line was that because we are fallen, and don't think we will forget thank you Eve, there is no hope for this world, no purpose other than to await judgment and redemption in the next. Hence the strange notion of no real hope here. God condemned us, live with it.

Maybe this should have been a blog.

Click to expand...

Maybe a blog sure as i'm pretty certain you'll have some people willing to question you on this lol. Though i will agree that's a strange notion to me too.